Garden sculpted by art

By CAITLIN ORR

North Watch, a 2,500-pound massive bronze sculpture of a man and his dog, may not sound like a creature of the earth.

But the figure’s primal, organic look reflects Winnipeg artist Ivan Eyre’s musings about the connection between land and art, says McMichael Canadian Art Collection curator Sharona Adamowicz-Clements.

Visitors are now able to ponder that relationship, at the crest of a spiraling path that forms the heart of the Kleinburg gallery’s new sculpture garden.

“We are trying to see the vision of the artist in the landscape,” Adamowicz-Clements told Vaughan Today during the installation in mid-June. “(This garden) fits in with our mission of integrating land and art together.”

The space can be visited without paying the gallery entrance fee, to which other works will eventually be added.

The sculpture is part of a collection of nine donated to the gallery by the 88-year-old Eyre, in what may be the last major series of works in his lifetime.

Three trucks transported the sculptures 2,700 kilometres from Billings Bronze Inc. in Montana, where they were cast.

The imposing statues — North Watch measures about three feet wide by 10 feet tall — reflect the Group of Seven’s legacy of taking inspiration from the land, says curator Katerina Atanassova.

How they reflect that legacy is largely up to the gallery-goer to decide, though.

“Anything is plausible as long as the viewers are truthful to themselves,” says Adamowicz-Clements.

She points out the vaguely Egyptian and Mesopotamian look to the sculptures in the stylized, stiff angles of the statues.

But there are contrasting futuristic elements, like the slightly alien look conveyed by the single-eyed reclining figure in Plains Call.

The statues’ vastness and grandeur shows their connection with the panoramic landscape of Eyre’s prairie home, says Adamowicz-Clements.

The symbolism of the figures had been gestating for years in Eyre’s sketches and other works, she says, but they were completed in the past two and a half years.

The casting company does solely artistic work using the lost wax process.

The North Watch statue was made using about 80 pieces welded together. It took between three and four months to assemble.

But one look up at the majestic figure should convince gallery-goers it was worth it.

Meanwhile, the McMichael is featuring another new exhibition of portraits and videos, intended to depict the evolution of Aboriginal self-determination.

The exhibition, titled Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists, is being presented by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and will be on display until Sept. 11.